


Control

by Khashana, read by Khashana (Khashana)



Series: Disrespect!verse [8]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Zuko, Azula escapes, Child Abuse, Gaslighting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self Harm, Like so much, Ozai’s A+ Parenting, Podfic, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Podfic and fic together, Psychiatric Hospitals, Psychotic break, Sort Of, The Cycle of Abuse, Therapy, plus Iroh and Ty Lee, redemption for Azula, self hatred, yes this is a ball of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26241727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana
Summary: Azula is fifteen when everything goes wrong.Azula is fifteen when Ty Lee abandons her and runs off and she can’t sleep, can’t stop looking over her shoulder and wondering who else is going to leave, who secretly hates her, who’s ready and waiting to stab her in the back.Azula is fifteen when she doesn’t sleep for three days and gets a D on an exam and her father tells her he thought she wasn’t a failure but maybe he was wrong.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Disrespect!verse [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782586
Comments: 51
Kudos: 340





	Control

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you are going to feel Very Called Out by this. Fair warning. If you're one of my small brigade of followers with shitty mental health and/or home lives, I would recommend not reading this in public. I WILL argue with your intrusive thoughts and pass on therapy and CBT experience via fic.
> 
> [Podfic](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/control/)

Azula learned young what Zuko was good for.

Father praised her for asserting control, from throwing rocks at the ducks to joining in when Father told Zuko off for being stupid or embarrassing or disrespectful.

Mother didn’t like it. Mother pulled away, and scolded her, and looked at Azula like she was a strange and alien thing. So she sought Father’s approval instead. It was a vicious cycle that took her years to notice.

She’s told they played together as children, but she doesn’t remember it. Her earliest memories are of being pitted against Zuko, in academics, in karate, at home. She had to be the best, but if she couldn’t be that, she had to at least be better than Zuko. Because Zuko wasn’t good at anything.

She envied him sometimes for how easily he got Mother’s affection, when for Azula it was always stilted and fake, but then she would see what being Mother’s favorite got you. And she would remember that fake affection from her mother, with her father’s love, was ten times better than her mother’s love, with her father’s scorn and ridicule.

Really, Zuko deserved it. He was clumsy, loud, and too stupid to hear the rising impatience in Father’s voice when he was being weird, especially in public. Sometimes he would curl up in a ball with his hands over his ears, whenever things were too bright and loud, and make a horrid noise until Father picked him up by his shirt collar and dropped him in his room.

Father told him off a lot for backtalk, which you would think would make him stop doing it, but only made it less frequent. And then Father would berate him for something, and Zuko would start trying to make excuses, and that was grounds for a beating.

“Don’t be disrespectful,” Father would say. “I am your father, ungrateful child.”

(Azula only acted out enough to get beaten once, and then she learned better.)

Control was everything. She controlled how much she studied, and how much she practiced karate, and so she controlled how much her father praised her.

(Except sometimes. Sometimes, no matter how good she was, Father was dismissive, and then she went and found Zuko and made him hurt, and so she controlled _him_.)

When she was nine, Zuko went to the hospital and didn’t come home for a long time. When he did, half his face was bandaged and his voice was hoarse and raspy as though he’d been screaming the entire time.

It never really got better.

The first time Azula saw him after he took off the bandages, a cold pit formed in the bottom of her stomach, but she laughed at him anyway and told him how ugly he was.

(Being kind to Zuko made Father ignore her for days. She hadn’t made that mistake since she was seven.)

Azula meets Ty Lee at the Sozin Academy for Girls and likes her at once. Ty Lee is a gymnast, light on her feet and lighter in spirit, obsessed with astrology and completely gaga for dogs. She’s older, and she thinks Azula’s brilliant, and she’s right.

Azula figures out how to control Ty Lee and slowly separates her from her other friends.

“I don’t like Zhu Li,” she says. “She obviously doesn’t really care about you.” She doesn’t say _I care about you_ or _you’re stupid if you keep spending time with her,_ not out loud, not that day. She volunteers to deliver messages or invitations, and then doesn’t.

“Where are you going?” she asks one day when Ty Lee makes noises about having somewhere to be.

“I was going to hang out with Chan and Ruon-Jian,” Ty Lee says doubtfully.

“What do you _see_ in them?” Azula sighs. “Do you like one of them?”

“No. They’re just friends.”

“What could you possibly get from them that you don’t get from me?”

It’s like playing chess, except Ty Lee doesn’t know to defend her king until Azula has her in checkmate.

Ty Lee stays, and in return, Azula gives her everything she ever wanted—help with her homework, an exclusive job interview, dresses and food at fancy restaurants. Attention that’s all hers, not split between her siblings.

On the rare occasion that Ty Lee tries to talk to her about it, Azula says, “That never happened,” and “You’re imagining things,” and finally, “You’re so fanciful, Ty Lee, it’s no wonder no one else wants to be friends with you. You’re lucky you have me.”

When Azula is twelve, Zuko goes away to a faraway school, and for some reason Uncle Iroh moves out there with him.

No one tells her it’s the last time she’ll see her brother. She wishes she’d known. She doesn’t know what she would have done differently, but she doesn’t like that she didn’t know.

Ty Lee comes over and they paint each other’s nails, and it helps make the bad feeling in her stomach go away.

When Azula is fifteen, Ty Lee leaves.

She doesn’t say a word about it. She stops answering her phone and doesn’t turn up at school on the first day of the new semester, and when Azula calls her house phone, her mother tells her that Ty Lee got into a prestigious private school. “She _must_ have told you,” she keeps saying, sounding baffled.

“Well, she didn’t,” snaps Azula, and hangs up.

Ty Lee _left._ She didn’t tell Azula she was even applying to this school, she didn’t say goodbye, and she’s clearly blocked Azula’s number. She knew Azula would make her stay, and she didn’t give her a chance. It _hurts._ It keeps her up for a few nights, worrying at it like a dog with a chew toy, going over their interactions again and again.

Father tells her to pull herself together, that one insignificant girl shouldn’t even register to her. He sounds irritated, the way he never does with her. That’s his talking-to- _Zuko_ voice; she hasn’t heard it in years. It’s a voice that means _be better or else._

But as much as Azula made sure Ty Lee had no one else, Azula herself doesn’t have anyone else, either. She’d forgotten what it feels like, to sit alone at lunch, to have her only conversations be with her teachers, her sensei, and her father.

And even these relationships are suspect, now. Ty Lee was sweet and smiling up until she vanished. Who else is hiding something from her? Her father keeps talking about how it’s never too early to start thinking about college and planning which teachers she’ll ask for recommendation letters. Is Miss Lo, who praises her for her sharp mind, secretly planning to write Azula a bad letter? Does Miss Li gossip about her to the other teachers? Does her sensei actually think she’s as good as he says, or is he lying to keep her happy? No! That can’t be right, she’s the best in her class. That can’t be faked. Perhaps, then, he’s telling her she’s worse than she is, to make sure she stays with him and brings accolades to his dojo?

Now she can’t sleep for a different reason, or maybe it’s the same one, but it brought friends—hundreds of new negative fantasies to parade through her mind—it makes her terribly nervous—and keep her eyes wide open even as tears of exhaustion prick at them like ants. Everyone is suspect. Everyone might have ulterior motives. Everyone.

Not Father, though. Father loves her.

And then Azula fails a test.

It’s not her _fault._ Her concentration is shot, what with how little sleep she’s getting, and she can barely focus on a single question long enough to figure out what it’s asking, let alone the answer, because she doesn’t know the answers, they’re clearly made up, the products of an old, twisted mind—Miss Li can’t _possibly_ have gone over these topics in class—this is the betrayal! She knew it!

She is halfway through explaining this to Father, who is not _looking_ at her, when he cuts her off.

“I thought you were better than this.”

“What?” She can’t seem to catch her breath.

“You’ve disappointed me, Azula. I thought you were stronger than this. You’re just like your worthless brother. Weak. A failure.”

“No! Father, don’t you see?” And she tries again to explain.

Father cuts her off again. “Don’t talk back, or you won’t sit down for a week.”

And she would swear she heard Zuzu’s voice, not in her head but as though he was in the room with her: “I don’t _understand._ ”

“You leave at five o’clock sharp tomorrow morning,” says Father. “Be ready.”

Panicked as she is, Azula is still more afraid of asking for clarification than not knowing where she’s going at five o’clock sharp the next morning.

It’s not hard to be ready. She doesn’t even try to sleep.

Where she’s going turns out to be inpatient care in the psych ward.

The intake process is something of a blur, but she does remember her father telling them that she’s paranoid and delusional and not acting like herself, and he sounds so much more concerned than he did when he was telling her she was worthless, that she starts wondering if she made that memory up. They take her phone and put her in a barren room that doesn’t lock with another girl.

They make her talk to a psychiatrist, and sit through group therapy—twice—but she doesn’t have to contribute. She stares around at the other patients and wonders who is going to hurt her next. She barely takes in anything that’s said to her.

At bedtime, they give her a pill.

“I don’t want it,” says Azula, abruptly terrified—again, or still, she couldn’t say. They’re going to control her, they’re going to hurt her, they’re—

“Azula,” says a man in scrubs with a kind face, sitting down. It puts him lower than her, and from a sitting position he can’t make any sudden moves, and it calms her slightly. “It’s just a sleeping pill. To help you rest. I promise.”

“It really is,” says a young woman conversationally—another patient. She shows Azula an identical pill, and then takes it. “That’s all. You can trust Shyu. He’s one of the good guys.”

“ _I_ get antipsychotics,” puts in the young man behind her. “They look different. That’s just a sleeping pill. Promise.”

Azula will learn later that antipsychotics aren’t a bad thing to be on, but in the moment it’s what she needs to hear.

She takes the pill.

She gets the first full night of sleep she’s had since Ty Lee left, and she wakes up almost calm.

She gets breakfast with the others, and nearly everyone else goes up to the nurse’s desk to receive pills. Then it’s back to group.

“Azula, you seem more present today,” says the group leader. “Want to talk about why you’re here?”

“My best friend left,” she says. “It freaked me out a lot.” A couple of the other patients look curious. She supposes it does sound odd.

“Do you want to elaborate on that? How did it freak you out?”

“She was lying to me,” Azula explains. “She made me think everything was fine and then she just disappeared and blocked my number, and now I don’t know who else is lying to me, and it makes it hard to concentrate. And my dad doesn’t like that.”

Murmurs of understanding.

The group lets her be done talking for the moment, and she listens to their stories. Some of them are happy to talk, some have to be prodded. Some are embarrassed, some upset, some nonchalant. Some of them are horrifying.

After that group is a second one, education group, and then they break for lunch. In the afternoon is a third group, and then the psychiatrist finds her.

“Hi, Azula,” she says. “Can we talk?”

Azula consents.

“I’m not sure how much you remember about yesterday, but I’m Dr. Chang,” she continues. “I’d like to talk more about your course of treatment now that you’ve had a chance to get some rest.”

Azula does remember her, though not her name.

“Do you still feel like everyone is out to get you?”

Azula frowns and thinks about it. “I’m afraid that they are,” she tries. “But yesterday was worse?”

“You’re afraid that they are. Does that mean you’re not sure?”

“I guess?”

“Yesterday you seemed very certain that there was a plot against you. Has that changed?”

Azula only vaguely remembers having this conversation. But when she thinks about it, two days ago she was positive that Miss Li had set her up to fail, and now, it seems less likely. She can still feel the fear fluttering around the top of her ribcage, but it seems much more likely now that she failed that test because she hadn’t been able to focus in class for days or weeks or however long it’s been. She tries to explain this, and Dr. Chang nods.

“I don’t think you’re a candidate for antipsychotics right now. But I’d be interested in starting you on Prozac for the anxiety. What are your thoughts on that?”

The terror of last night has simmered down, and she considers it. It would be nice not to feel like this anymore.

They talk about the typical effects of Prozac, how long it will take to kick in (a few weeks) and what the side effects are (frightening, but only as much as every commercial for medication she’s ever seen), and Azula agrees to try.

“Azula, would you like to share anything?” says the group leader the next morning.

“Like what?”

“What are your goals for treatment?”

“I want to get Ty Lee back,” says Azula without thinking.

Slowly, they draw it out of her, first about how Ty Lee left, and then why.

“Dude,” says one girl, older than her but not by too much. “She’s not coming back. You abused her.”

“I _what?_ ”

“Harsh, Asami. She’s just a kid,” puts in a guy across the circle.

“She is literally describing what my boyfriend did to me,” snaps Asami. “Gaslighting. Making her think she has no other options. Tearing down her self-esteem. Good on the friend for getting out.”

“All right, Asami, let’s dial it down a notch,” says the group leader. “You see some connections between the way you were manipulated and how Azula treated her friend.”

“Some connections,” sniffs Asami disdainfully. “It’s about control, right? You wanted to control her.” This is directed at Azula.

“ _What else was there to do,_ ” says Azula, and they stare at her.

“You don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like, do you?” says the guy after a moment. Azula doesn’t know how she’s possibly supposed to answer that.

And they’re off. Over Azula doesn’t know how many group sessions, they go from healthy friendships to where she learned her “control issues” to healthy parent-child and healthy sibling relationships.

Azula fights it, denies it, does everything she can to stop the sinking feeling creeping up from her stomach, but there’s only so much she can lie to herself.

“You have to understand,” Asami tells her once, “that even if you change, she isn’t obligated to forgive you.”

“What do I have to do?” Azula asks.

“You’re not understanding me. _No matter what_ you do, she is _never_ obligated to forgive you. You have to stop expecting that, because otherwise you are _still_ trying to control what she does.”

… _Oh._

“So what do I do?” She feels lost, and fragile, like a stiff wind could blow through and she would stop existing.

“You become a better person _anyway._ Not because of her. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

They let Azula out of the hospital.

She doesn’t really want to go.

Being here, digging up her emotions like turning over rocks to see the bugs, it hurts. But seeing Father again…

He didn’t come visit her. Not once.

“He’s busy,” she told Asami.

“He’s a bastard,” Asami told her flatly.

“I recommend continued outpatient treatment,” her psychiatrist tells her father. “I’m writing you a referral to one of our resident therapists.”

“So, you’re so broken they couldn’t fix you?” her father says on the drive home. It hits like a knife in her chest.

Whatever status Azula used to have is gone. Almost everything she does is wrong now, rude somehow. If she answers questions, she’s mouthing off. If she stays quiet, she’s being disrespectful. She lies to him, and that sometimes works.

She can fall back into the personality her father loved, the sharp, driven girl, but every smile is a lie, and she can’t keep it up all the time. She stops failing tests, but her perfect grades don’t return.

“Hopeless,” her father snorts when he sees her report card. “If you don’t shape up, I’m going to send you to the shrink. Do you want that?”

She doesn’t shape up, and her father cashes in the referral.

Her new therapist is Shyu.

“Her grades are slacking, and she’s mouthing off,” her father says.

“I’ll make sure to talk to her about it,” says Shyu.

When the door shuts behind her father, Shyu turns to her and smiles. “Hey, Azula. It’s good to see you again.”

She bursts into tears.

“I know what I did to Ty Lee was wrong, but I don’t _care_ ,” she tells him once. “I don’t actually feel it. I don’t care about hurting anyone.”

“Okay,” says Shyu. “What _do_ you feel when you think about that?”

“He’s right about me,” she tells him another time. “I’m worthless. Worse than worthless. I ruined her life.”

“How did you ruin her life?” says Shyu.

“Why does it _matter_ if she wanted to go? I didn’t want her to, doesn’t that matter?”

“Why didn’t you want her to?”

“She shouldn’t have lied to me. She was probably lying the whole time. If I hadn’t controlled her, who knows what she would have done?”

“Let’s unpack that.”

“I think maybe I’m bipolar.”

“Why is that?”

“Because one day I’ll be like, look at me, I’m gorgeous, I’m so smart, I can do anything, and the next day it’s all, I’m hideous and useless and stupid. There’s no in between.”

“Let’s look at the diagnostic criteria.”

They determine that bipolar isn’t right, but somehow Azula doesn’t leave feeling like her mood swings aren’t important.

“Am I a narcissist?”

“You’re sixteen.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It is, actually. Your brain isn’t done forming yet. You have more control over what kind of adult you’ll grow up to be now than you’ll ever have over what kind of adult you _are_ once you are one.”

“What if I’m making it up to feel special? Maybe there’s nothing wrong with me and I just want an excuse for how I treated Ty Lee.”

“You’re not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you would have to be doing it on purpose, by definition. If you aren’t consciously inventing a mental illness, you’re not making it up.”

“Maybe it’s subconscious.”

“Azula, if your subconscious is so desperate for attention or validation it’s inventing a mental illness, that _in and of itself_ is valid enough to say you need the help. Besides, whether you end up with a formal diagnosis or just ‘abuse-related trauma’, that still counts. You can’t claim you invented that.”

“I need to get _out_ of here.”

“Let’s talk about how to do that.”

“I think my brother escaped. He went off to a school far enough away that he lives with our uncle, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Have you considered talking to him?”

Azula blanches. “I hurt him,” she admits in a small voice. “I hurt him maybe worse than I did Ty Lee.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s not my fault! He was practically asking for it!”

“Would your father have hurt you, if you had supported him?”

“Probably.”

“It’s possible to acknowledge that you were backed into a corner and made the best decision you could to save yourself, and that you caused your brother pain and feel regret for that, at the same time.”

“Do you have contact information for him?”

“Even if I did…why would he ever want to talk to me? He probably hates me.”

“I found Uncle Iroh on Facebook.”

“Have you thought about reaching out?”

“What if he doesn’t want to help? Or he can’t. He has to put Zuko first.”

“Who’s putting _you_ first?”

“He should have taken _me!_ Not Zuko!”

“He should have taken us _both._ ”

“If he finds out who I really am, he’ll hate me and dump me back with Father.”

“Is that the most likely scenario, or the worst case?”

“He _should_ hate me.”

“Let’s talk about the word ‘should.’”

“No one has ever loved me. I’m too much. Father tried.”

“Did he?”

“Azula, the circle of people you’ve had in your life with the opportunity to love you is very small. And you’ve lashed out at several of them. Do you think, if you show them you’re trying not to do that, they might be happy to love you?”

“Why are you even still here?”

“Because I want to help you.”

“No, because Father’s paying you. You don’t really care what happens to me. I’m just a paycheck.”

“Azula.” Shyu looks serious. “I didn’t enter this business to make money. I entered it because I wanted to help people. I charge your father money so at the end of the day, I can go home to a roof over my head and a meal on the table.”

She doesn’t answer.

“I could be doing a lot of things to make money that are easier and more profitable than this. Therapy is not the easy A of professions.”

“I’m dragging you down with me, too.”

“I said it wasn’t easy. I didn’t say it wasn’t worth every minute, for every child that goes home a little better equipped to deal with their life.”

“Why don’t you give up on me? We’ve been doing this for like a year, and I’m still a mess. This isn’t going away.”

“Recovery is _hard_ , Azula. It can take a long time, and it isn’t a straight upward path. A year isn’t that long. It’s even harder when you’re still living in an abusive household. You are incredibly strong, even if you don’t feel it.”

“And, Azula? I will _never_ give up on you.”

She gets as far as clicking the Message button on Uncle Iroh’s profile, but what would she say?

Come back and save me from Father, too?

Father is abusing me, too, now, and if you have any soul you’ll do something about it?

She closes the window.

This becomes a pattern: Every few weeks or months, she opens the window and doesn’t reach out. Sometimes she goes to type something. She doesn’t send.

She types out “help me” and just stares at the screen, resting her chin on her palm.

Her elbow slips, and her hand bangs down on the keyboard and hits the Enter key.

_Help me;/,lkjl_

She stares at it in horror. That was a thousand percent not what she would have gone with.

_Azula? What’s wrong?_

Welp. Not much for it now.

_Father is verbally and mentally abusive and I need to get out of this house._

Miles away, Iroh frowns at his computer screen.

“Zuko?” he calls. “There’s something here you should see.”

Azula is supposed to start college this fall. Not any of the colleges her father wanted her to get into—she suspects her grades never recovered quite enough for that—and he puts her down constantly for it, but not going is out of the question.

She gets a very official-looking letter in the mail on what appears to be genuine college stationery inviting her to leave several weeks early to join the local chapter of a national leadership group called the Posse Foundation. They’ll even sponsor her plane ticket.

There’s also a letter, a few days later and postmarked from an entirely different locality, from a girl named Mai, introducing herself as Azula’s Posse Mentor and giving advice and instructions.

Meanwhile, Azula steals some important pieces of information from her father’s files and sends them to Uncle Iroh via an app called Signal he has her download, and he messages her back on it a few days later confirming that as far as the school is concerned, her mailing address is his.

She never thought she would be glad that the school is far enough away she has to fly, but it makes slipping away that much easier. Iroh sends her a very convincingly photoshopped ticket, Father drops her off at the airport, and Azula waits there for about an hour before Iroh messages her to tell her that they’re in short-term parking and to meet them in arrivals.

He’s older than she remembers him, but it has been a few years. His smile is benevolent, and his eyes twinkle, and standing next to him is Zuko.

It hits like a kick in the chest.

He’s taller, broader, and she wouldn’t be certain it was him if not for the scar. His expression is unrecognizable. There’s none of the angry, bitter teenager she remembers in it. Instead, he smiles at her, a small, genuine thing.

“Hey, Az,” he says, and Azula is rooted to the floor. They walk right up to her as though nothing has ever been wrong between them, and Zuko says, “Can I give you a hug?”

Azula nods mutely, and he wraps his arms around her. She can’t quite bring herself to hug him back, but she leans into it.

“Are you ready to leave?” asks Uncle Iroh, and she knows he means the airport, but it feels like cutting the cord to her entire life up until now when she says yes.

It’s a couple hours’ drive back to Uncle Iroh’s house, and Azula is quiet for most of it. Uncle seems happy to fill the silence on his own, telling stories, playing the radio, laying out plans for the future which Azula does try to listen to.

“Are you actually going to college?” Zuko asks her once. “I wasn’t really clear on that.”

“Lightened courseload for a semester,” she says mechanically, “because it’s too late to transfer and too hard to keep Father from finding out. Then maybe community college, close enough that I can stay with you.” She’s not ready for full-time, she’s certain of it. It’s hard enough to hold herself together as it is. She got through senior year of high school only by sheer tenacity and promising herself she wouldn’t have to do this again.

“I expect to be able to update Ozai’s finances in the system within the next several months, so the reimbursement for spring tuition comes back to Azula,” says Uncle cheerfully. “So he won’t find out until he doesn’t need to pay for sophomore year. And by that time, he won’t be able to do a thing about it, legally speaking.”

“Because you’ll turn eighteen in April,” says Zuko, counting on his fingers (probably with less subtlety than he thinks.)

“Exactly!” says Uncle.

It isn’t until she’s alone with Zuko, standing in the bedroom that’s going to be hers, that she breaks.

“Why are you helping me? You should hate me. I hurt you, all the time, and I hurt other people too, I’m a monster.”

Hands close on her shoulders.

“Stop that.”

She stops.

“You’re sorry, right?”

She nods.

“So apologize.”

That makes her look at him. Those odd golden eyes that she usually only sees in the mirror (ever since she started avoiding Father’s gaze) look back at her. Her lips form around words, but she doesn’t know what they are, so she doesn’t say them. Finally, she comes out with, “What do you mean?”

“Don’t say you’re a monster. Say you’re sorry.”

That’s all he wants? “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

There’s no deceit in his eyes. Zuko doesn’t have a deceitful bone in his body. The best he has ever been able to do is keep secrets, he can’t lie for shit and he certainly can’t manipulate her the way she could him. It’s been four years, but she’s certain it’s still true.

But it doesn’t soothe the horrible, festering guilt caught in her chest the way the string of self-abuse did. She doesn’t even register the nails digging into her own palms until hands take hers and forcibly uncurl them. Zuko looks serious.

“Stop hurting yourself, Az.”

She gapes at him.

“I know, it doesn’t hurt enough, right? You feel like you need to make it hurt, but you don’t. This isn’t how you make up for anything.”

“How would you know?” Zuko isn’t _like_ her.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “If you think Father didn’t fuck me up, too, you’re kidding yourself.”

The casual expletive is almost startling. It’s taboo, in her house, in what used to be their house.

“It might not have been the same way, and I know you think I’m stupid, but it’s not _that_ hard to extrapolate from shit like ‘I’m a monster.’” He squeezes her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, since apparently that’s all she’s allowed to say.

“I told you, I forgive you.”

“How?”

“You’re my sister.”

Is that really all it takes?

“Az. Do you cut yourself? Or scratch, or burn?”

She stares at him, mute with horror and shock.

“I’m not going to judge you. But I need to know.”

She shakes her head finally. He relaxes a little.

“Okay. Don’t start.”

It startles a little laugh out of her, but he doesn’t smile back. “I’m serious. You need to self-soothe, tear up some paper or splash cold water on yourself or knead some dough, we’ll set you up at the dojo and you can break some boards and beat the shit out of some unsuspecting first dan who thinks they’re all that. But this?” He holds up her hands. “This is how it starts. And you _never fucking get out again._ ” 

“Okay,” she whispers, because the intensity is starting to scare her a little.

“Wake me up if you need to, okay? Call me, whatever. If you don’t think you can control it and you need someone to stop you.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

She feels like a little kid again, except she can’t remember her big brother looking out for her like this. She hasn’t let him, for as long as she can remember. It feels good, in a scary kind of way. She has no control right now, of anything, but Zuko makes it okay. _I’ve got you_ , he’s saying, and she believes him.

She boots up Skype the next day for her session with Shyu.

“Hey!” he says when he sees her. “I bet you have a lot to discuss today. How’d it go?”

She laughs. Understatement of the year. “Shyu, you have _no idea._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, you can follow me on [tumblr.](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/) Come ask me about my fic; I am literally always down for [this ask game.](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/post/625660382487461889/rageprufrock-lets-go-i-will-love-you-if-you)  
> Zuko’s not in a position to know it yet, but there is in fact a way out again once you start self-harm. It just doesn’t occur on any reasonable timeline, and does not at all lessen the degree to which I wish _somebody had warned me._  
>  I did in fact consult sources for this, but if any of you have been inpatient and notice something off about the description, feel free to drop me a line.  
> That was not really intended to be Asami Sato--I stuck the name in as a placeholder and then it felt weird to change it.  
> Also! The Posse Foundation is a real thing! I'm pretty sure you're actually Posse from high school days, not invited to join weeks before college starts, but what does Ozai know? He googled it to make sure it was legit and then never looked at it again.


End file.
